The Augustinian Theodicy Analysis

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Throughout history, religion has never been a unanimous belief among all societies. Such a strong disagreement can be evident for various reasons, but personal experiences are an incredibly influential aspect. Through observations or experiences of evil, society often disregards the concept of an “all great” entity because of a lack of intervention. Common points of this include allowing the holocaust to take place, but also point to forms of non-moral evil such as natural tragedies that take place everyday. This “argument from evil” prevails with atheistic beliefs as they firmly believe that if a greater being did exist that was “all powerful”, it would not allow such drastic instances to occur to completely innocent people. Multiple theodicies brought forth by religious individuals rebut this argument as they see the purpose of evil; therefor maintain a belief in some form of a God. A theodicy titled the “Augustinian Theodicy” brings forth a great point that there is a purpose to …show more content…
They point that it is unnecessary to form a strong-willed soul through hardships when that individual could just be created like that in the first place. What this argument lacks is the true aspects of this form of society. Not only would progress be completely inhibited through the lack of struggle in the world, but the ability of free will would be non-existent. Divine control would be binding to society to the extent that there would be no purpose of it, completely defying what instructions on following God’s will imply. Without the choice to overcome temptation, man cannot legitimately flourish as a follower of God. Free will is both a gift and test given from God, and it is dependent on society to utilize it for the correct purpose. Many people do not act on it in such a way, but divine intervention towards such actions would disrupt the purpose of free

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